<i>The Parliaments of Autonomous Nations</i>, Edited by Guy Laforest and André Lecours

In the last 30 years, our understanding of minority nationalism and the dynamics involved in minority mobilization, political demands, and minority–majority relations have been the subject of numerous publications. While many of these works have focused on the rise of minority nationalism in the established liberal democracies of Canada, the UK, and Spain, more recent work has also looked at minority nationalism in other cases, such as Bosnia and Herzegovina, Ethiopia, Iraq, and Nepal. In short, we have a good understanding of the reasons for minorities to demand political recognition and territorial autonomy, both in the West and in non-Western cases. Moreover, we also know how majorities have responded to minority nationalism through political and legal means. All of these topics have been the theme of a rather substantial body of literature. However, as Laforest and Lecours make clear in the introductory section to their edited volume, the same cannot be said about the role of parliaments in the request of minorities to be recognised and self-identify. In fact, they state very directly that “we can safely say that the study of parliaments and the field of nationalism have really never been connected” (p. 7). Indeed, it is the major contribution of this edited volume to look at a number of parliaments in territories that have been traditionally associated with minority nations. The cases of Catalonia (Carles Viver Pi-Sunyer and Mirei Grau Creus), the Basque Country (Alberto López Basaguren), Galicia (José Julio Fernández Rodríguez), Flanders (Martine Goossens and Michiel Elst), Quebec (François Rocher and Marie-Christine Gilbert), Scotland (Michael Keating), and Northern Ireland (Guy Laforest) are discussed as examples of minority nations’ parliaments. The picture that emerges from these case studies is interesting—these parliaments have some elements in common such as acting as representations of the identity of the different groups and as forums in which demands for minority nations are being discussed, formulated and reconstituted. However, the chapters also demonstrate the internal dynamics in these parliaments and the fact that minority nationalism is by far not as coherent as many assume. Scotland is an example for this battleground, where the leading political party—the Scottish National Party—has strongly focused on a secessionist agenda, a project rejected by all other parties in the Scottish Parliament. Likewise, the Parliament of Northern Ireland (known as Stormont) is a reflection of the deep division of this part of the UK. Similar debates about questions of secession and further autonomy for the minority nation are most visible in Catalonia and Quebec, as well as in Flanders.

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